Extracting text with the inner and outer-most boundary with Perl regex - regex

Given this two text as example
my $line = "[cytokine]<ADJVNT-PROP-0> signaling, which have not [to]<PREP> date been shown [to]<PREP> be [[regulat]<EXP-V-0>ed]<EXP-PP-V-0>";
my $line2 = "[Human [papillomavirus]<VACC-PROP-0>]<VACC-PROP-0> genotype [31]<NUM> does not [express]<EXP-V-0> detectable [microRNA]<MIR-0> levels [during]<PREP> latent or productive virus replication.";
What I want to do to extract all the string that are bounded by <VAC or <ADJ and <EXP
On the left side when there are multiple match extract the string from innermost
onwards to the end to the right until the further most.
For example the above result I want to have a single regex that returns these:
Output1: signaling, which have not [to]<PREP> date been shown [to]<PREP> be [[regulat]<EXP-V-0>ed]
Output2: genotype [31]<NUM> does not [express]
Why this code doesn't work:
my #lines = ("[cytokine]<ADJVNT-PROP-0> signaling, which have not [to]<PREP> date been shown [to]<PREP> be [[regulat]<EXP-V-0>ed]<EXP-PP-V-0>",
"[Human [papillomavirus]<VACC-PROP-0>]<VACC-PROP-0> genotype [31]<NUM> does not [express]<EXP-V-0> detectable [microRNA]<MIR-0> levels [during]<PREP> latent or productive virus replication.");
my $count = 0;
foreach $line (#lines) {
$count++;
my ($sel) = $line =~ /<VAC|<ADJ.*>(.*)<EXP.*>/;
print "Output $count: $sel\n";
}
Executable here: https://eval.in/50772
What's the right way to do it?

First your OR operator has the wrong scope:
/<VAC|<ADJ.*>(.*)<EXP.*>/
This will match either <VAC or <ADJ.*>(.*)<EXP.*>. Wrap the needed part around non-capture groups:
/<(?:VAC|ADJ).*>(.*)<EXP.*>/
Then, I think it's safer to use some negated class here, and by that, I mean [^>]+ instead of .*:
/<(?:VAC|ADJ)[^>]+>(.*)<EXP[^>]+>/
Lastly, you don't seem to want any <VAC or <ADJ in the captures. So I added a negative lookahead (and made the (.*) lazy) in the (.*) part:
/<(?:VAC|ADJ)[^>]+>((?:(?!<VAC|ADJ).)*?)<EXP[^>]+>/
eval.in updated
If you want to get the <EXP part in (your first example), extend the capturing group:
/<(?:VAC|ADJ)[^>]+>((?:(?!<VAC|ADJ).)*?<EXP[^>]+>)/
eval.in for this part.

Several problems:
| means "or", but you did not use any kind of parentheses, so it is <VAC or the rest. You in fact want <VAC or ADJ, then the rest.
.* is greedy. It matches as much as it can. If you want it to match less, use .*?.
The regex tries to match as soon as possible. If you want it to match later, prepend a greedy .*.
This should work:
/.*<(?:VAC|ADJ).*?>(.*)<EXP.*>/

Related

Extract first word after specific word

I'm having difficulty writing a Perl program to extract the word following a certain word.
For example:
Today i'm not going anywhere except to office.
I want the word after anywhere, so the output should be except.
I have tried this
my $words = "Today i'm not going anywhere except to office.";
my $w_after = ( $words =~ /anywhere (\S+)/ );
but it seems this is wrong.
Very close:
my ($w_after) = ($words =~ /anywhere\s+(\S+)/);
^ ^ ^^^
+--------+ |
Note 1 Note 2
Note 1: =~ returns a list of captured items, so the assignment target needs to be a list.
Note 2: allow one or more blanks after anywhere
In Perl v5.22 and later, you can use \b{wb} to get better results for natural language. The pattern could be
/anywhere\b{wb}.+?\b{wb}(.+?\b{wb})/
"wb" stands for word break, and it will account for words that have apostrophes in them, like "I'll", that plain \b doesn't.
.+?\b{wb}
matches the shortest non-empty sequence of characters that don't have a word break in them. The first one matches the span of spaces in your sentence; and the second one matches "except". It is enclosed in parentheses, so upon completion $1 contains "except".
\b{wb} is documented most fully in perlrebackslash
First, you have to write parentheses around left side expression of = operator to force array context for regexp evaluation. See m// and // in perlop documentation.[1] You can write
parentheses also around =~ binding operator to improve readability but it is not necessary because =~ has pretty high priority.
Use POSIX Character Classes word
my ($w_after) = ($words =~ / \b anywhere \W+ (\w+) \b /x);
Note I'm using x so whitespaces in regexp are ignored. Also use \b word boundary to anchor regexp correctly.
[1]: I write my ($w_after) just for convenience because you can write my ($a, $b, $c, #rest) as equivalent of (my $a, my $b, my $c, my #rest) but you can also control scope of your variables like (my $a, our $UGLY_GLOBAL, local $_, #_).
This Regex to be matched:
my ($expect) = ($words=~m/anywhere\s+([^\s]+)\s+/);
^\s+ the word between two spaces
Thanks.
If you want to also take into consideration the punctuation marks, like in:
my $words = "Today i'm not going anywhere; except to office.";
Then try this:
my ($w_after) = ($words =~ /anywhere[[:punct:]|\s]+(\S+)/);

regex to duplicate repeated patterns, substituting part of the pattern

I'd like to duplicate a multiple matches in a line, substituting part of the match, but keeping the runs of matches together (that seems to be the tricky part).
e.g.:
Regex:
(x(\d)(,)?)
Replacement:
X$2,O$2$3
Input:
x1,x2,Z3,x4,Z5,x6
Output: (repeated groups broken apart)
X1,O1,X2,O2,Z3,X4,O4,Z5,X6,O6
Desired output (repeated groups, "X1,X2" kept together):
X1,X2,O1,O2,Z3,X4,O4,Z5,X6,O6
Demo: https://regex101.com/r/gH9tL9/1
Is this possible with regex or do I need to use something else?
Update: Wills answer is what I expected. It occurs to me that it might be possible with multiple passes of regex.
You would have to capture the repeating patterns as one match and write out replacements for the whole repeating pattern at once. your current pattern cannot tell that your first and second matches, x1, and x2, respectively, are adjacent.
Im going to say no, this is not possible with one pure regex.
This is because of two important facts about capture groups and replacing.
Repeated capture groups will return the last capture:
Regex's are able to capture patterns which repeat an arbitrary amount of time by using the form <PATTERN>{1,},<PATTERN>+ or <PATTERN>*. However any capture group within <PATTERN> would only return the captures from the last iteration of the pattern. This would prevent your desired ability to capture matches that arbitrarily repeat.
"Hold on", you might say, "I only want to capture patterns that repeat one or two times, I could use (x(\d)(,)?)(x(\d)(,)?)?", which brings us to point 2.
There is no conditional replacement
Using the above pattern we could get your desired output for the repeated match, but not without mangling the solo match replacement.
See: https://regex101.com/r/gH9tL9/2 Without the ability to turn off sections of the replacement based on the existence of capture groups, we cannot achieve the desired output.
But "No, you can't do that" is a challenge to a hacker, I hope I am shown up by a true regex ninja.
Solution with 2 regexes and some code
There's definitely ways to achieve this goal with some code.
Here's a quick and dirty python hack using two regexes http://pythonfiddle.com/wip-soln-for-so-q/
This makes use of python's re.sub(), which can pass matches to one regex to a function ordered_repl which returns the replacement string. By using your original regex within the ordered_repl we can extract the information we want and get the right order by buffering our lists of Xs and Os.
import re
input_string="x1,x2,Z3,x4,Z5,x6"
re1 = re.compile("(?:x\d,?)+") # captures the general thing you want to match using a repeating non-capturing group
re2 = re.compile("(x(\d)(,)?)") # your actual matcher
def ordered_repl(m): # m is a matchobj
buf1 = []
buf2 = []
cap_iter = re.finditer(re2,m.group(0)) # returns an iterator of MatchObjects for all non-overlapping matches
for cap_group in cap_iter:
capture = cap_group.group(2) # capture the digit
buf1.append("X%s" % capture) # buffer X's of this submatch group
buf2.append("O%s" % capture) # buffer O's of this submatch group
return "%s,%s," % (",".join(buf1),",".join(buf2)) # concatenate the buffers and return
print re.sub(re1,ordered_repl,input_string).rstrip(',') # searches string for matches to re1 and passes them to the ordered_repl function
In my specific case I'm using powershell, so I was able to come up with the following:
(linebreaks added for readability)
("x1,x2,z3,x4,z5,x6"
-split '((?<=x\d),(?!x)|(?<!x\d),(?=x))'
| Foreach-Object {
if ($_ -match 'x') {
$_ + ',' + ($_ -replace 'x','y')
} else {$_}
}
) -join ''
Outputs:
x1,x2,y1,y2,z3,x4,y4,z5,x6,y6
Where:
-split '((?<=x\d),(?!x)|(?<!x\d),(?=x))'
breaks apart the string into these groups:
x1,x2
,
z3
,
x4
,
z5
,
x6
using positive and negative lookahead and lookbehind:
comma with x\d before and without x after:
(?<=x\d),(?!x)
comma without x\d before and with x after:
(?<!x\d),(?=x)

Regular Expressions: querystring parameters matching

I'm trying to learn something about regular expressions.
Here is what I'm going to match:
/parent/child
/parent/child?
/parent/child?firstparam=abc123
/parent/child?secondparam=def456
/parent/child?firstparam=abc123&secondparam=def456
/parent/child?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child?thirdparam=ghi789&secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123&thirdparam=ghi789
/parent/child?thirdparam=ghi789
/parent/child/
/parent/child/?
/parent/child/?firstparam=abc123
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456
/parent/child/?firstparam=abc123&secondparam=def456
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child/?thirdparam=ghi789&secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123&thirdparam=ghi789
/parent/child/?thirdparam=ghi789
My expression should "grabs" abc123 and def456.
And now just an example about what I'm not going to match ("question mark" is missing):
/parent/child/firstparam=abc123&secondparam=def456
Well, I built the following expression:
^(?:/parent/child){1}(?:^(?:/\?|\?)+(?:firstparam=([^&]*)|secondparam=([^&]*)|[^&]*)?)?
But that doesn't work.
Could you help me to understand what I'm doing wrong?
Thanks in advance.
UPDATE 1
Ok, I made other tests.
I'm trying to fix the previous version with something like this:
/parent/child(?:(?:\?|/\?)+(?:firstparam=([^&]*)|secondparam=([^&]*)|[^&]*)?)?$
Let me explain my idea:
Must start with /parent/child:
/parent/child
Following group is optional
(?: ... )?
The previous optional group must starts with ? or /?
(?:\?|/\?)+
Optional parameters (I grab values if specified parameters are part of querystring)
(?:firstparam=([^&]*)|secondparam=([^&]*)|[^&]*)?
End of line
$
Any advice?
UPDATE 2
My solution must be based just on regular expressions.
Just for example, I previously wrote the following one:
/parent/child(?:[?&/]*(?:firstparam=([^&]*)|secondparam=([^&]*)|[^&]*))*$
And that works pretty nice.
But it matches the following input too:
/parent/child/firstparam=abc123&secondparam=def456
How could I modify the expression in order to not match the previous string?
You didn't specify a language so I'll just usre Perl. So basically instead of matching everything, I just matched exactly what I thought you needed. Correct me if I am wrong please.
while ($subject =~ m/(?<==)\w+?(?=&|\W|$)/g) {
# matched text = $&
}
(?<= # Assert that the regex below can be matched, with the match ending at this position (positive lookbehind)
= # Match the character “=” literally
)
\\w # Match a single character that is a “word character” (letters, digits, and underscores)
+? # Between one and unlimited times, as few times as possible, expanding as needed (lazy)
(?= # Assert that the regex below can be matched, starting at this position (positive lookahead)
# Match either the regular expression below (attempting the next alternative only if this one fails)
& # Match the character “&” literally
| # Or match regular expression number 2 below (attempting the next alternative only if this one fails)
\\W # Match a single character that is a “non-word character”
| # Or match regular expression number 3 below (the entire group fails if this one fails to match)
\$ # Assert position at the end of the string (or before the line break at the end of the string, if any)
)
Output:
This regex will work as long as you know what your parameter names are going to be and you're sure that they won't change.
\/parent\/child\/?\?(?:(?:firstparam|secondparam|thirdparam)\=([\w]+)&?)(?:(?:firstparam|secondparam|thirdparam)\=([\w]+)&?)?(?:(?:firstparam|secondparam|thirdparam)\=([\w]+)&?)?
Whilst regex is not the best solution for this (the above code examples will be far more efficient, as string functions are way faster than regexes) this will work if you need a regex solution with up to 3 parameters. Out of interest, why must the solution use only regex?
In any case, this regex will match the following strings:
/parent/child?firstparam=abc123
/parent/child?secondparam=def456
/parent/child?firstparam=abc123&secondparam=def456
/parent/child?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child?thirdparam=ghi789&secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123&thirdparam=ghi789
/parent/child?thirdparam=ghi789
/parent/child/?firstparam=abc123
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456
/parent/child/?firstparam=abc123&secondparam=def456
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child/?thirdparam=ghi789&secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123&thirdparam=ghi789
/parent/child/?thirdparam=ghi789
It will now only match those containing query string parameters, and put them into capture groups for you.
What language are you using to process your matches?
If you are using preg_match with PHP, you can get the whole match as well as capture groups in an array with
preg_match($regex, $string, $matches);
Then you can access the whole match with $matches[0] and the rest with $matches[1], $matches[2], etc.
If you want to add additional parameters you'll also need to add them in the regex too, and add additional parts to get your data. For example, if you had
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123&fourthparam=jkl01112&thirdparam=ghi789
The regex will become
\/parent\/child\/?\?(?:(?:firstparam|secondparam|thirdparam|fourthparam)\=([\w]+)&?)(?:(?:firstparam|secondparam|thirdparam|fourthparam)\=([\w]+)&?)?(?:(?:firstparam|secondparam|thirdparam|fourthparam)\=([\w]+)&?)?(?:(?:firstparam|secondparam|thirdparam|fourthparam)\=([\w]+)&?)?
This will become a bit more tedious to maintain as you add more parameters, though.
You can optionally include ^ $ at the start and end if the multi-line flag is enabled. If you also need to match the whole lines without query strings, wrap this whole regex in a non-capture group (including ^ $) and add
|(?:^\/parent\/child\/?\??$)
to the end.
You're not escaping the /s in your regex for starters and using {1} for a single repetition of something is unnecessary; you only use those when you want more than one repetition or a range of repetitions.
And part of what you're trying to do is simply not a good use of a regex. I'll show you an easier way to deal with that: you want to use something like split and put the information into a hash that you can check the contents of later. Because you didn't specify a language, I'm just going to use Perl for my example, but every language I know with regexes also has easy access to hashes and something like split, so this should be easy enough to port:
# I picked an example to show how this works.
my $route = '/parent/child/?first=123&second=345&third=678';
my %params; # I'm going to put those URL parameters in this hash.
# Perl has a way to let me avoid escaping the /s, but I wanted an example that
# works in other languages too.
if ($route =~ m/\/parent\/child\/\?(.*)/) { # Use the regex for this part
print "Matched route.\n";
# But NOT for this part.
my $query = $1; # $1 is a Perl thing. It contains what (.*) matched above.
my #items = split '&', $query; # Each item is something like param=123
foreach my $item (#items) {
my ($param, $value) = split '=', $item;
$params{$param} = $value; # Put the parameters in a hash for easy access.
print "$param set to $value \n";
}
}
# Now you can check the parameter values and do whatever you need to with them.
# And you can add new parameters whenever you want, etc.
if ($params{'first'} eq '123') {
# Do whatever
}
My solution:
/(?:\w+/)*(?:(?:\w+)?\?(?:\w+=\w+(?:&\w+=\w+)*)?|\w+|)
Explain:
/(?:\w+/)* match /parent/child/ or /parent/
(?:\w+)?\?(?:\w+=\w+(?:&\w+=\w+)*)? match child?firstparam=abc123 or ?firstparam=abc123 or ?
\w+ match text like child
..|) match nothing(empty)
If you need only query string, pattern would reduce such as:
/(?:\w+/)*(?:\w+)?\?(\w+=\w+(?:&\w+=\w+)*)
If you want to get every parameter from query string, this is a Ruby sample:
re = /\/(?:\w+\/)*(?:\w+)?\?(\w+=\w+(?:&\w+=\w+)*)/
s = '/parent/child?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123&thirdparam=ghi789'
if m = s.match(re)
query_str = m[1] # now, you can 100% trust this string
query_str.scan(/(\w+)=(\w+)/) do |param,value| #grab parameter
printf("%s, %s\n", param, value)
end
end
output
secondparam, def456
firstparam, abc123
thirdparam, ghi789
This script will help you.
First, i check, is there any symbol like ?.
Then, i kill first part of line (left from ?).
Next, i split line by &, where each value splitted by =.
my $r = q"/parent/child
/parent/child?
/parent/child?firstparam=abc123
/parent/child?secondparam=def456
/parent/child?firstparam=abc123&secondparam=def456
/parent/child?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child?thirdparam=ghi789&secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123&thirdparam=ghi789
/parent/child?thirdparam=ghi789
/parent/child/
/parent/child/?
/parent/child/?firstparam=abc123
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456
/parent/child/?firstparam=abc123&secondparam=def456
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child/?thirdparam=ghi789&secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123&thirdparam=ghi789
/parent/child/?thirdparam=ghi789";
for my $string(split /\n/, $r){
if (index($string,'?')!=-1){
substr($string, 0, index($string,'?')+1,"");
#say "string = ".$string;
if (index($string,'=')!=-1){
my #params = map{$_ = [split /=/, $_];}split/\&/, $string;
$"="\n";
say "$_->[0] === $_->[1]" for (#params);
say "######next########";
}
else{
#print "there is no params!"
}
}
else{
#say "there is no params!";
}
}

Using regular expressions to find a word with the five letters abcde, each letter appearing exactly once, in any order, with no breaks in between

For example, the word debacle would work because of debac, but seabed would not work because: 1. there is no c in any 5-character sequence that can be formed, and 2. the letter e appears twice. As another example, feedback would work because of edbac. And remember, the solution must be done using only regular expressions.
A strategy I attempted to implement was: match the first letter if it's inside [a-e], and remember it. Then find the next letter in [a-e] but not the first letter. And so on. I wasn't sure what the syntax was (or even if some syntax existed) so my code didn't work:
open(DICT, "dictionary.txt");
#words = <DICT>;
foreach my $word(#words){
if ($word =~ /([a-e])([a-e^\1])([a-e^\1^\2])([a-e^\1^\2^\3])([a-e^\1^\2^\3^\4])/
){
print $word;
}
}
I was also thinking of using (?=regex) and \G but I wasn't sure how it would work out.
/
(?= .{0,4}a )
(?= .{0,4}b )
(?= .{0,4}c )
(?= .{0,4}d )
(?= .{0,4}e )
/xs
It's probably results in faster matching to generate a pattern from all combinations.
use Algorithm::Loops qw( NextPermute );
my #pats;
my #chars = 'a'..'e';
do { push #pats, quotemeta join '', #chars; } while NextPermute(#chars);
my $re = join '|', #pats;
abcde|abced|abdce|abdec|abecd|abedc|acbde|acbed|acdbe|acdeb|acebd|acedb|adbce|adbec|adcbe|adceb|adebc|adecb|aebcd|aebdc|aecbd|aecdb|aedbc|aedcb|bacde|baced|badce|badec|baecd|baedc|bcade|bcaed|bcdae|bcdea|bcead|bceda|bdace|bdaec|bdcae|bdcea|bdeac|bdeca|beacd|beadc|becad|becda|bedac|bedca|cabde|cabed|cadbe|cadeb|caebd|caedb|cbade|cbaed|cbdae|cbdea|cbead|cbeda|cdabe|cdaeb|cdbae|cdbea|cdeab|cdeba|ceabd|ceadb|cebad|cebda|cedab|cedba|dabce|dabec|dacbe|daceb|daebc|daecb|dbace|dbaec|dbcae|dbcea|dbeac|dbeca|dcabe|dcaeb|dcbae|dcbea|dceab|dceba|deabc|deacb|debac|debca|decab|decba|eabcd|eabdc|eacbd|eacdb|eadbc|eadcb|ebacd|ebadc|ebcad|ebcda|ebdac|ebdca|ecabd|ecadb|ecbad|ecbda|ecdab|ecdba|edabc|edacb|edbac|edbca|edcab|edcba
(This will get optimised into a trie in Perl 5.10+. Before 5.10, use Regexp::List.)
Your solution is clever but unfortunately [a-e^...] doesn't work, as you found. I don't believe there is a way to mix regular and negated character classes. I can think of a workaround using lookaheads though:
/(([a-e])(?!\2)([a-e])(?!\2)(?!\3)([a-e])(?!\2)(?!\3)(?!\4])([a-e])(?!\2)(?!\3)(?!\4])(?!\5)([a-e]))/
See it here: http://rubular.com/r/6pFrJe78b6.
UPDATE: Mob points out in the comments below, that alternation can be used to compact the above:
/(([a-e])(?!\2)([a-e])(?!\2|\3)([a-e])(?!\2|\3|\4])([a-e])(?!\2|\3|\4|\5)([a-e]))/
The new demo: http://rubular.com/r/UUS7mrz6Ze.
#! perl -lw
for (qw(debacle seabed feedback)) {
print if /([a-e])(?!\1)
([a-e])(?!\1)(?!\2)
([a-e])(?!\1)(?!\2)(?!\3)
([a-e])(?!\1)(?!\2)(?!\3)(?!\4)
([a-e])/x;
}

Why can't I match a substring which may appear 0 or 1 time using /(subpattern)?/

The original string is like this:
checksession ok:6178 avg:479 avgnet:480 MaxTime:18081 fail1:19
The last part "fail1:19" may appear 0 or 1 time. And I tried to match the number after "fail1:", which is 19, using this:
($reg_suc, $reg_fail) = ($1, $2) if $line =~ /^checksession\s+ok:(\d+).*(fail1:(\d+))?/;
It doesn't work. The $2 variable is empty even if the "fail1:19" does exist. If I delete the "?", it can match only if the "fail1:19" part exists. The $2 variable will be "fail1:19". But if the "fail1:19" part doesn't exist, $1 and $2 neither match. This is incorrect.
How can I rewrite this pattern to capture the 2 number correctly? That means when the "fail1:19" part exist, two numbers will be recorded, and when it doesn't exit, only the number after "ok:" will be recorded.
First, the number in fail field would end in $3, as those variables are filled according to opening parentheses. Second, as codaddict shows, the .* construct in RE is hungry, so it will eat even the fail... part. Third, you can avoid numbered variables like this:
my $line = "checksession ok:6178 avg:479 avgnet:480 MaxTime:18081 fail1:19";
if(my ($reg_suc, $reg_fail, $addend)
= $line =~ /^checksession\s+ok:(\d+).*?(fail1:(\d+))?$/
) {
warn "$reg_suc\n$reg_fail\n$addend\n";
}
Try the regex:
^checksession\s+ok:(\d+).*?(fail1:(\d+))?$
Ideone Link
Changes made:
.* in the middle has been made
non-greedy and
$ (end anchor) has been added.
As a result of above changes .*? will try to consume as little as possible and the end anchor forces the regex to match till the end of the string, matching fail1:number if present.
I think this is one of the few cases where a split is actually more robust than a regex:
$bar[0]="checksession ok:6178 avg:479 avgnet:480 MaxTime:18081 fail1:19";
$bar[1]="checksession ok:6178 avg:479 avgnet:480 MaxTime:18081";
for $line (#bar){
(#fields) = split/ /,$line;
$reg_suc = $fields[1];
$reg_fail = $fields[5];
print "$reg_suc $reg_fail\n";
}
I try to avoid the non-greedy modifier. It often bites back. Kudos for suggesting split, but I'd go a step further:
my %rec = split /\s+|:/, ( $line =~ /^checksession (.*)/ )[0];
print "$rec{ok} $rec{fail1}\n";